Topeka ? For abortion opponents, regulating clinics performing the procedure isn’t enough. Those clinics need to be singled out for special treatment, isolated both in regulation and in the public mind.

Abortion opponents consistently have fought new regulations applying to all medical procedures involving general anesthesia or sedation performed outside a hospital. They don’t want a bill that includes abortion clinics as part of a much larger group.

Some of it is strategy, driven by fears that a broad bill can’t overcome opposition from doctors. Some of it is politics, an attempt to give Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her fellow abortion-rights supporters in the Legislature a black mark. Some of it is passion, driven by the belief that abortion is inherently different.

Political roadblock

What it all means is that abortion clinics aren’t likely to face stricter regulation as long as Sebelius is governor and has enough political allies.

“At some point, after you’ve tried and failed several times, it becomes time to look at alternative ways to solve the problem,” said Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence. “If we want to solve the problem, we have to have a bill the governor will sign.”

Sebelius vetoed bills in 2003 and 2005 to require the Department of Health and Environment to set minimum health and safety standards for abortion clinics. The House Health and Human Services last week rewrote a bill regulating all office-based surgeries so that it was identical to the one Sebelius rejected last year.

Last year, supporters of the bill fell only two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto in the House. This year, Sebelius and all 125 House seats are up for election.

“Is there a possibility, because it’s an election year, one could have a change of heart?” said Sen. Mark Gilstrap, D-Kansas City, who supports such regulation.

Bills raise suspicions

Bills regulating abortion clinics immediately create suspicions that the goal is to burden some clinics with enough rules to shut them down.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, who led the House committee’s work on this year’s bill, noted that because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, states can’t ban most abortions.

However, she acknowledged that when it comes to the clinics, “If I could shut them all down, I would.”

Landwehr and other abortion opponents have political and strategic reasons to pursue a bill dealing with only abortion clinics.

Narrow wording

It’s easier to make a political point with a narrow bill. Sebelius might sign a broad bill, then point to that action to blunt anti-abortion activists’ criticism of her during a campaign.

Anti-abortion activists also doubt whether a broad bill would pass because of opposition from the Kansas Medical Society. It prefers to work with the State Board of Healing Arts, which licenses physicians, on such standards.

But abortion opponents also want to make a case that abortion is riskier and more traumatic than other procedures.

Like other abortion rights supporters, Peter Brownlie, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, can marshal statistics to show that abortion is less risky than other procedures. But he understands why opponents argue the opposite.

“The intent and hope is that if they make those kinds of claims repeatedly, they will stick,” he said.

Incidents loom large

Two incidents last year have loomed large in abortion opponents’ arguments.

The first was the death of a 19-year-old Texas woman last year after she had had an abortion in Wichita. An autopsy listed the cause as complications from the abortion, but the Board of Healing Arts said neither Dr. George Tiller nor his staff were responsible.

The board also revoked the medical license of Dr. Krishna Rajanna over conditions at his Kansas City, Kan., clinic – two years after abortion opponents complained.

Abortion opponents also argue that women and girls who seek the procedure need more protection, because they are less likely to complain about shoddy care afterward out of embarrassment or shame over their unwanted pregnancies.

“If someone has a liposuction go wrong, they shouldn’t have any problem talking about it,” said Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville, an abortion opponent.

It is worth asking whether legislators would be pursuing regulations on, for example, liposuction, if groups formed to oppose it picketed clinics regularly and stationed people outside clinics to publicize every ambulance run to and from them.

Of course, such possibilities seem far-fetched when it comes to liposuction, colonoscopies or other procedures, even though the treatment often involves preserving someone’s physical health, mental health or quality of life.

The difference between abortion and other medical procedures – driving the desire to isolate abortion clinics in state regulation and in the public mind – is the obvious one. Any hopeful parent who has seen a sonogram 17 or 18 weeks into a pregnancy understands it, and it drives a social and political movement.